aroslav: Blog

This week, at chapter 176 of "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins" (Double Twist), 84-year-old Jacob in his 18-year-old body made his stand. He saw and felt real injustice and made public his stand in front of the National Service Reform Commission. I'm surprised that it only took the old man in him eighty-four years before he could speak out against injustice. And you can bet, that decision will affect everything in Jacob's life and his pod from this point forward. The story is a total of 239 chapters by the time we reach the end of book 5, Double Team.

Comments and email were a bit reserved, perhaps because we are all torn about making a stand regarding today's injustices and social issues. I know I am. I find I know where I want to stand but there are many effective arguments to the contrary. Most promoted by people who are far more vociferous in their arguments than I am.

On the other hand, I got this comment by an elder statesman that seems to support Jacob completely: "As for 'Jacob, you need to be polite', I cry =Bull= =Shit=!!! -Some- things need to be said as they -are-! The 'commission' =needs= to face up to what is happening ... and that includes the high suicide, et al, rate! The people 'in charge' of what is going on, =especially= in the agro fields/areas, should be yanked out of their (relatively) cushy positions and have =seeeerious= disciplinary measures taken for their incompetence and/or corruption [she =slept= her way to help her friend?!!]. There is =no= call for all those suicides. Spin it any way you want, but I'm not backing off. ((Yes, I'm well aware that that sort of thing goes on =today=, too!))"

If I make a cogent argument about something in one of my stories, it is because I have spent days crafting how I want to say it and then my characters toss the argument off as though it was spontaneous. And I still miss the mark at times.

Here's an example. I've been in relative isolation for six months. It wasn't because I was afraid of any disease. It's because that's the way I live. I often go days on end without speaking to anyone when I'm camped, and that period of six months saw me camped in single locations with little contact for longer periods of time. As soon as the lockdown started, I started wearing a mask on my two trips a month to get supplies of groceries and medication. Then I got up to my Idaho summer camp and wore a mask whenever I was near people.

But one friend chose to argue that masks weren't effective, and ridiculed their use. His argument? If your jeans can't stop a fart, how can a cloth mask stop a virus? He argued with evidence presented by a doctor supposedly significant in the discovery of mad cow disease and getting a cure for it. Viruses are smaller than fart particles, a mask won't stop them.

I had no answer for days as I studied and asked myself if masks were not effective because jeans couldn't stop a fart. He's right-as far as his analogy goes. But a single cough releases about 3,000 droplets at about 50 miles per hour. A single sneeze may release 30,000 droplets at about 200 miles per hour. Either could contain as many as 200,000,000 viral particles. It takes about 1,000 to infect a person. And a cloth mask doesn't stop the particles. It stops the propulsion. If I blow on my hand, I feel the air move on my hand. If I blow through a cloth toward my hand, I don't feel the air move. The viral particles are airborne and at 200 miles per hour can be across a room in less than a second. A large room. If I cut the air movement to 5 miles per hour, I reduce the chance of that particle reaching you before the droplets fall to the ground.

So, I keep wearing my mask when I'm in proximity to other people. Not for me. It's so I reduce the risk of infecting you with something I don't know I'm carrying. I don't expect the same courtesy from you.

Equivalent of Jacob's stand? Hardly, but I've already offended my quota of people with my stand on black lives, anti-fascism, and anti-racism. Unsurprisingly, the same friends who won't wear a mask are the ones who think the police should just start shooting the protesters and rioters and get rid of them all. Add to the violence. We should know how well that works.

Some time ago-greater than two years-I made a statement on my First Exit blog that there was no longer such a thing as truth. Social media has made certain of that. People can't even agree upon the facts regarding something they personally witnessed. So, when people cite facts and data and tell me what the truth is, it really doesn't tell me anything about truth. It tells me what kind of person he is that wants to believe that is truth. It's been that way for thousands of years.

Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."
"What is truth?" retorted Pilate. (John 18:37-38 NIV)

I finished the first draft of Adams' Apple this week and am awaiting the last two chapters to be returned from my fine editors. In the meantime, I completely rewrote it. I probably undid some of their hard work, but not much. The question is whether I should release it now, or wait until I have run down on other projects a little. It's timely, since it deals with a virus that threatens to end humanity. But at the same time, I hate to keep overlapping stories when there will come a time in a few months that I might not have anything running.

That's not such an issue here on SOL as it is for my Patreon subscribers because they get things earlier than they are offered here. Currently, they are reading the last book of Jacob's story, as well as a re-release of American Backroads complete with pictures from my travels, and a Wayzgoose story named Willow Mills that will probably never make it to these hallowed pages because it has limited audience and a complicated format that is not conducive to the SOL reading experience. I'll get another story ready for release by my alter ego sometime soon. Once again, I'm deep in rewrites.

This week, I'm visiting my daughter in Western Washington while my trailer is undergoing what I thought were minor repairs but are taking more time than they take, of course. She has just told me that for a Father's Day gift she plans to give me a new recliner for the trailer. So, we're about to go shopping. My current recliner is suffering from wear and tear and is in crippled condition. There's at least one broken spring and the seat sags so far that I'm afraid I'll double up and slide out the back.

Did you know a recliner won't stop a fart?

I've just finished rereading Double Team, the fifth and last in "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins" series. I released the eBook version to my patrons today and decided to just re-read the book from front to back this week. It brought a lot of things home, including the social strife we are currently undergoing in America. Some of it was painful to read but it is a message of hope and possibility. I've been reminded of late that nothing I wrote, sadly, is beyond the realm of possibility. I hope it's not a reflection of reality.

In addition to making me think about our current situation, it made me think about my situation last year when I was writing the story.

First of all, let me just get this out front right now. I am ANTIFAscist, ANTIRAcist, and believe with all my heart that Black Lives Matter. If you tell me 'All lives matter,' I can only respond by saying thank you for agreeing with me. You cannot believe all lives matter if you don't believe black lives matter. All lives aren't currently in danger. Black lives are. Focus on the problem or be the problem.

Now that I have that out of the way-and I cordially invite all fascists, racists, and people using 'all lives matter' as a means of trivializing the present threat to black lives to stop reading both this post and all my stories-let me get back to when I was writing Double Team. There's more on this subject in my First Exit blog.

I keep surprisingly good records of what I write. I don't know why I can't keep such good records for my taxes. I began writing Double Team on June 30, 2019. From the first of April until the end of June, I wrote and posted for patrons, a chapter of the Jacob Hopkins saga every day. (It's a total of 237 chapters.) I began this book at that pace. On July 5th, I walked off the pickleball court where I played every morning and said I couldn't play any longer because I couldn't catch my breath. That began the summer of hell.

I managed to get a doctor's appointment at my home clinic (a 350-mile drive from my summer camp). I stopped at every rest area to take a nap because I couldn't stay awake for the whole trip. After an examination, my doctor declared I had late-developing asthma. She prescribed albuterol and a steroid inhaler and sent me back to Idaho. That was July 26th. I attended a wedding that evening and driving from Lakewood WA to Lynnwood WA after the wedding (about 50 miles) I had to stop after 20 miles and take a nap. And I left the reception hours early.

My writing productivity declined. I was managing maybe three chapters a week instead of a chapter a day. And it kept getting worse. Twice, I went to the local clinic after spending a sleepless night in a panic attack because I couldn't breathe and expected to die. After the last visit, I booked a flight back to Seattle because I knew I couldn't drive that far and I needed to see the doctor. A friend took me to the airport. When I debarked from the plane and walked to the terminal, I had to stop and rest twice. My ex-wife, with whom I have a very good relationship, took me to my doctor on Tuesday, August 20. The doctor poked, prodded, and prescribed a more powerful (and expensive) steroid for my lungs. Then, as a last-minute check, she ordered an EKG.

When she came back into the examining room and told me my heart rate was 167 beats per minute and the cardiologist in Seattle wanted to see me right now, everything changed. I found out I was in a-fib and had been for two months while taking albuterol-known to cause the heart to race. The cardiologist ordered an echocardiogram, prescribed a heart regulating drug and blood thinner, and told me to be back on October 12 for cardioversion.

By that time, I'd already been in a-fib for more than two months and the drugs didn't seem to be helping. I wasn't sleeping more than an hour at a time, but fell asleep after fifteen minutes of attempting to do anything. Like write. My pace had gone down to 100 words and then sleep. 100 words and then sleep. I knew I didn't have much further to go to finish the book, but I was having a hard time getting there. And that is how the month of September went as I lost appetite and should have lost weight, but retained water pound for pound. My legs looked like tree stumps.

On September 22, I finished the Double Team manuscript and sent it off to my editors. September 27, I turned 70 years old. The next day, a friend drove me back to Seattle where I stayed with my ex and my daughter. When I had difficulty breathing and threw up the hardboiled egg it had taken me over half an hour to eat, on Monday, my daughter called my doctor and they told her to bring me directly to the emergency room. I had cardioversion the next morning on October 1, eleven days before I was scheduled.

My heart was back in correct rhythm, but I still couldn't breathe. I had so much water in my system that I was coughing non-stop and nearly suffocating in my sleep. Lung capacity tests showed I was breathing at about 35% capacity. Enter diuretics. A big dose. I dropped thirty pounds in the next two weeks. I weighed less than I had since I was a sophomore in high school. But I could breathe at last.

There was one more step and that was an ablation where they burned out the bad part of my heart on November 4. Two weeks to make sure everything was stable and I was on the road again.

My writing is not back to the frantic pace of a chapter a day again, but it is moving along nicely. When I read what I'd written during that time of illness, it brought back the pain I was in, the horror and panic over not being able to breathe, the inability to eat, the impossibly long walks from bed to shower. I remember what was going on in my own body as I wrote the climax of "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins." I'm happy to say, we both survived.

I released Double Team to my patrons in eBook today. They are already well into the story in the online serial.

I took and take the pandemic seriously. I still wear my mask because even if it doesn't save me, perhaps it will save someone else. I maintain my social distance. I sit in my trailer and write yet another story (or three) to give to my readers. And I weep for the fact that in sixty years, since we marched for civil rights, protested on campuses and in the streets, and yes, even rioted when forced back by police or National Guard, we have learned nothing. We have turned back the clock on civil, gender, and individual rights. We have become less for having been here before.

Be well.

After spending two months in self-isolation amidst the flies, heat, and humidity of Phar, TX, I pulled up stakes and headed for Idaho on May 19. I arrived at Sun Meadow near Worley, ID at 2:00 Thursday afternoon May 28-ten days and 2900 miles. I am so glad to be home for the next four or five months.

I am maintaining self-isolation and social distancing. It's funny to look at a bunch of naked people wearing masks. Most of the time they aren't, of course. Technically, Idaho will stop quarantining as of today and will allow groups of up to 50 but with 6 feet social distancing. That means our gatherings will be out-of-doors, which is great for the weather this weekend but might be chilly for the coming week with temps in the 60s. That's a whole lot better than the 106 it was in Del Rio, TX when I camped on my first night out!

But I'm wearing the mask when I'm away from my immediate site. Why? Well, having nearly died of heart failure just before my 70th birthday last fall, my doctor considers me 'at risk.' I do what little I can by limiting social contact, washing frequently, and wearing a mask. I understand that I cannot depend on other people-even my closest friends-to protect me. Each of them I saw on Friday walked right up to me to shake my hand and welcome me back to camp. I understand the mask doesn't do a lot to protect me, but I've been in six states in ten days, stopping at rest areas, stopping at truck stops, stopping at RV parks. I wear the mask to protect them.

It gives me a real feeling of empowerment that I can choose a simple act to protect other people.

I also have friends on the front lines battling the virus. Nurses, doctors, and even reactivated retired military, functioning as Battle Captain for Emergency Response in the Army and working with the DoD on CoVid-19 modeling. I will not, by God, do anything to make their jobs more difficult.

I'm not going to point out any of the other crap in the world. Even as isolated as I maintain myself, I get enough news pushed in front of me to understand America and the World are really fucked up. You don't need me elaborating on it.

I've been getting some writing done while I was on the road and continue apace. I have two aroslav stories that I'm working on. Adams' Apple is a farce and lampoon revolving around a virus that renders all men in the world impotent. Except one. Fun and games ensue as I manage to lampoon the media, scientists, medicine, politics, the President, bureaucracy, religion, the military, the Secret Service, the leaders of several countries, and the chef in the kitchen. I think I'm just three or four chapters from the end of the story and have been getting edits back steadily from my editors with a few comments from my Sausage Grinder patrons who pay $10 a month to see whatever I'm writing in its raw, unedited state.

The second story is hopefully within ten chapters of being complete. Pussy Pirates is a story set in the Swarm Universe of Thinking Horndog. Of course, when I finish writing in about a month or so, it will go to the Swarm authors' group for judgment on its canon worthiness, so I could still end up with an odd story that is only available on my own website instead of as part of the proper universe. Regardless, I'm sure to be at least three months out on that one.

A couple of days ago, I finished posting Wayzgoose's Steven George & The Dragon. Reading young adult fairytales is not everyone's cup of tea, but those who enjoyed the story were vocal enough that I will probably resurrect an old draft called Steven George & The Terror, a sequel. It needs some work, but it's cute. My immediate attention, however, is on the rewrite of American Royalty 1: Coming of Age. This rewrite is so complete that I will probably repost it as a new story titled Rise and Awaken, a Destiny's Call novel. The general story concept remains the same. An American society that has carefully defined classes, a young man emerging as a leader, and a tension-filled love story between him and his former schoolmate turned advisor and assistant. The way the story is told, the names of the classes, and the kind of relationship the two have are all brand new. And it is significantly shorter than the 112,000-word original.

So, I'm hanging in there, staying healthy, and writing a lot with ideas for more banging around in my head. I hope this finds you well and safe.

Yesterday, Chapter 165 of Double Twist posted ending Part XIII of "The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins." In it, we see that Marvel and Hopkins and their entire pod are being groomed for the National Service by promoting Service Reform. When I started this massive story, I made a list of things that could have branched the timelines of the old man Jacob and his new 14-year-old self. One of the pieces that stood out to me most was the effect of having a mandatory National Service period of two years for everyone between the ages of 18 and 21.

Last week, May 6, 2020, the Pandemic Response and Opportunity Through National Service Act was introduced in Congress. This isn't new. In 2017, the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, was created and charged by Congress to provide a blueprint for how to expand all forms of service. The new legislation is the result.

"After two-and-a-half years of intensive research, public hearings, and conversations with Americans across the country, the Commission released its final report, Inspired to Serve. The report contains 164 recommendations for promoting and empowering Americans to serve their country.

"Taken together, the recommendations offer a comprehensive blueprint to service for Americans, beginning with civic education and service learning, starting in kindergarten; national service opportunities so accessible and incentivized that service becomes a rite of passage for millions of young adults; and new and revitalized service options for adults of any age, background, or experience." (The Brookings Institute in an article on Friday, May 15 titled "COVID-19 has made expanded national service more important than ever" by Isabel V. Sawhill and Larry Checco)

There are important differences between what has been proposed in Congress and my meagre foretelling of a National Service in Jacob's story. Jacob's story mandated every person between the ages of 18 and 21 to serve for two years, by Amendment to the Constitution. The laws supporting the amendment were hashed together and basically gave the Service over to the Military to manage. That would have resulted in 4 million new service members each year! The new bill proposes to grow AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 750,000 service opportunities over a three year period.

But they cite many of the same benefits I used in Double Twist.

"Many others in both the public and private sectors, both Democrats and Republicans, support using national service not only to help mitigate the coronavirus, but also to enhance disaster relief, provide assistance to hard-pressed first responders, supplement the staffing of many nonprofits serving the poor or unemployed as well as provide high schoolers an option to serve after graduation, at a time when colleges may not be fully open and entry-level jobs may be scarce."

Well, knowing Congress, the whole concept of an expanded National Service will ultimately be amended so many times that we'll scarcely recognize it behind the billions of dollars in relief, defense, corporate subsidies, Wall Street bailouts, and congressional salaries that will get tacked onto it. And if there aren't a bunch of major corporations along the lines of Haliburton or GEO Group, CoreCivic, or Ahtna Technical Services who can see how to make a profit off the National Service, it will never become a reality.

You heard it in my fiction first. Let's hope most of what I wrote was wrong.

There are 30 more chapters of Double Twist queued up to post over the next three months on SOL before we switch over to the last volume in the story, Double Team. My Patreon supporters will begin Double Team next Sunday, May 25.

According to my stats page, this week my Homepage Access Count topped 1,000,000. (That's not all in a week. That's my lifetime count.) At the same time, my blog reached its 250,000th viewing. Wow! Thank you all. I hope you found what you wanted.

According to some of the email I got this week, that wasn't always the case. So, I'll posture myself and do a little lecturing. No. Let's call it sharing what I know because this stuff is complicated.

Last week, I reposted the entire Model Student Series, complete with edits and re-organized books. As a result, the previously three books in the series became six books in the series. If that wasn't enough, Books 1, 4, and 6 bear the original publishing dates back in 2012 and 2013, while Books 2, 3, and 5 bear the 2020 publishing date. So, going to my page and sorting my 41 stories by date does not put the books in reading order.

There are two ways to figure out the order. The first is to access my homepage and locate any of the Model Student stories. At the top of the description, it will have a highlighted link that says Model Student and a number, 1-6. That number is the order of the book you are looking at.

The best way is to click that link. The new page displayed will be the list of all the Model Student stories in reading order. The far left column, which is untitled, contains the number of the book in order.

Why is it so complicated? Because I'm stupid.

When I originally wrote the series, I had no expectations for it other than reading on SOL. But when I released the story in eBook and print, some years later, I discovered the books were just too long for getting people to buy them. So, I broke up the first one into three books and the second one into two books. When it came time to update the series on SOL, I didn't want to delete the original three with all their scoring info, so I just added the new ones and updated the originals. That gives them the out-of-sequence dates.

Okay, so what's next?

Well, I'm not going to do that again! The only other story that would potentially create that kind of hassle is Living Next Door to Heaven and I'm not going to update that story at all. If you want to read it as ten separate books instead of three long serials, you can do that on my website or by buying the eBooks.

I am in the process of re-editing the Wonders of My World series and posting it on my website. I won't be updating it on SOL. The changes are two-fold. First, I've re-proofread everything and corrected any errors. Not terribly significant. Second, I've added in all the photos of my travel and tall tales. Those will only be available in the online format on my website where I can store the photos and keep things together. US Highways will start appearing on that site next week.

There is something new in the works. New to you, that is. It's actually a Wayzgoose book I published in 2011. Next week, I'll begin serializing Steven George & The Dragon under the author name Wayzgoose here on SOL. It's a young adult book, but at 70, I still get a kick out of it. A series of fairytales told as part of a journey by our intrepid dragonslayer. It's a fun read. No sex, like most Wayzgoose stories. However, some of the subject matter gets too mature for children. Think Grimm's fairytales, not Disney's.

Sweltering in Place

Temps here in Pharr Texas have topped 100 degrees three times this week with yesterday hitting 105. I'm looking forward to the relief of temperatures only hitting 90 this week.

Back in the early 90s I was teaching a seminar that included people from Alaska who had come to freezing cold Seattle to get warm. They'd been experiencing temperatures of -90F. We asked what -90 was like. The answer was, "It's just like -60, but faster."

Now I look at the temperature of 105 and can say, "It's just like 90 but faster." As my deceased mother-in-law used to say, "We'll die of heat prostitution!"

Be well, my friends!